Italian inspired garlic and ginger prawns with spaghetti.

Today I got some real inspiration from two remarkably similar sources. Both were connected with Puglia in Italy. Last night I fished out an old DVD by Rick Stein about his own inspirations in the Mediterranean from a few years ago (Mediterranean Escapes) and I particularly enjoyed the section about Puglia. This is an area that doesn't have the luminous beauty or fame of Tuscany but one in which good honest Italian fare is cooked in homes and restaurants. Interestingly it has appeared to me once again today in my purchase of the BBC Food and Travel magazine (May 2015). The area has been described as Italy's bread basket and the region is famed for cucina povera (peasant food). I like the rustic approach and dynamic so to hear and read that a lot of the food comes from the wild automatically appealed. Only the other day I dressed a salad predominantly with leaves from dandelion leaves and nettles in the garden.

My meal tonight was an unctuous mini feast quite simple in the preparation. Firstly I made a chunky marinade out of chopped fresh garlic, a single hot chilli pepper and chopped fresh ginger. I used the eventual paste (ground down in a pestle and mortar) to flavour the freshly prepared king prawns purchased from the fishmonger in the Victoria Centre. They were a good price actually at nearly a fiver for eight. I also brought some peas in their pods and shucked these and added them to the spaghetti as it cooked to an al dente texture. The tomatoes and basil were simply lightly tossed together with a little Italian olive oil.

In this dish I didn't directly copy any recipe but just made up something I thought would work well together and hoped the garlic and ginger would go some way to helping cure my head cold. It certainly did. If I can get hold of some snapper or a similar fish I may well try something more authentic to the cuisine of Puglia next time.

The finished dish.